Horrible Fail and the New Student

Hardee was ratting happily in lowsec. Just cruising around. In one system he sees a lone occupant. Always vigilant, he warps to a safe and d-scans.

A Hulk is out there.

You’ve got to be kidding! It must be at a POS or something. Hardee quickly scanned it down to a belt. He looked at his ship: Thrasher, rat fit. No point. Damn. Hardee zipped off to his home station just one jump away. He could taste the kill. Yeah, it might be bait, but he didn’t care.

Now, the fail began…..

Instead of grabbing one of the PVP fit Rifters waiting to go, instead of jumping into a leftover gank fit Thrasher, and instead of throwing a point on his ratmobile, he … grabs … a …

Stabber.

A T-1 fit Stabber.

The Stabber is poorly fit as it was the ship the hacker had mangled and was lost to some overzealous CONCORD Captain in Jita. A GM gave Hardee his ship back, but with the fail fittings the hack stuck in there. He never changed them.

Now, Hardee has some Ruptures that are much better fit, but they were too many jumps out (9) to get.

So, thinking big guns make a difference, Hardee took off with 4x 425mm Autos, 2xRocket Launcher 1s, a scram, web, and some various other junk.

He jumped back into the system and warped directly to the belt. SCORE. Not only is the Hulk there, BUT THE IDIOT WAS AT ZERO!!!! Instant target, scrammed, and webbed. The target was moving but there was no hope…or so Hardee thought.

He started to lay into the target, sitting right at optimal. Boy, he thought, those shields are strong. less than 40 damage per volley! WTF??? The rockets are doing some damage, which is weird. Oh, wait…

The rockets are Guristas Gremlins. Ok, faction ammo, EM damage. In the guns? Phased Plasma….Shit. Thermal damage. No wonder it was taking forever.

Just as Hardee broke into armor, there was a big swoop of shield recovery. No Neuts to suck up that cap, and a Hulk with it’s lasers off are full of cap. Still, no “friends” have shown up to help.

Then, the rockets stopped firing. WTF? Why wasn’t it reloading. Oh, if Hardee had rockets it would…And there was no extra gun ammo, either.

That’s right, no ammo. A quick note to the target in local was full of truth: “Um, this is embarassing. I’m out of ammo”. Hardee had to shut things down and scoot away with his head hung low. As he arrived at his safe, a “buddy” of his (most likely his alt) showed up in a Dramiel. It was for the best. That Dram would have eaten up Hardee in no time.

After the GCC timed out, Hardee made his way back to the station, dejected. He stripped the Stabber and boxed it up. He won’t be that failful again.

****

I ran a few level 4 missions with some corp/alliance mates last Friday. I hadn’t flown missions in a fleet, and only have accomplished a single-room level 4 solo (in a BC with a Exequror in tow + many warp outs) before, so it was a very new and fun experience. And boy, does it pay well. And the standings increase was awesome. I need to run some more when my training schedule allows.

OUCH has a lot of Euro and Aussie time zone instructors, so it makes planning training a bit more difficult. I plan to complete a few more modules this week. Hopefully. I need to get moving into the meat of the courses. 0.0 beckons.